When's the Nest Ice Age?
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Hi, I'm Dave Thurlow from the Mount Washington Observatory and this is The Weather Notebook. Well, it's time to answer one of the many questions that have been tossed over the transom here at our paltial studios. Today's question comes from Yuma, AZ.

Listener: "My name's Charles Gries. I listen to you on KAWC. I really enjoy your program. Is there going to be another ice age?"

Yes. But the really important question is when. Now for Yuma Arizona it's going to be a long time maybe a billion years, before continental drift places North America far enough North to ice over the hottest city in the country. But for those of us who live north of a line from New York City, to Chicago to Anchorage, it could be only another few dozen millenia until glaciers make a comeback.

In fact, if you look at the big picture, we're in an ice age right now. I mean it's only been ten thousand years since two miles of ice retreated from places like Wisconsin, Ohio, New York, New Brunswick and points north. The earth's average temperature today is about 10 degrees below the long term average - long term meaning millions of years.

So yes, while 90 percent of the earth's history has been ice age free, ice ages have been coming and going for a long time and will certainly be coming again to a town near you. But the next advancing ice sheet will encounter something that past ice sheets never faced - civilization. Now there's a rough forecast.

For additional information on glaciers, be sure to visit our website at weathernotebook.org. Our show is underwritten by Subaru with major support provided by the National Science Foundation.